Picture within your sanctified imagination, the reality of a world where there is no time. A timelessness in which all matter and energy and events of objective reality occur simultaneously. That is, an existence with a simultaneity for all objective reality of matter and energy and events from the neurological components of cognitive human thoughts to the vastness of the universe’s “Cosmic Web” of galaxies and supernovas. In other words, picture God’s timeless Eternal Now, where with God everything happened, is happening and will happen simultaneously.  However, we are all confined, restricted, even enslaved, in this life to move to some small degree back and forth along the lengths of each of our three dimensions but to only move forward single-pace along the dimension of time, all within God’s Space-and-Time creation, called a “Space-Time Continuum.”  Can this be an understanding of how God and His angels and those beyond death’s door exist, when, or better as, “time shall be no more”? Literally, it would be the most colossal, biblical worldview – A Timeless Eternal Now – within which is God’s created Space-Time Continuum. As a hermeneutical worldview, it is a simple picture.

How long is God’s Eternity? How can we possibly conceive it?  How can we picture it? How can we describe it?  How can anyone explain it? Is it a reality and existence, where time has not and is not and will not exist? How does God exist in such a place in that “a day with Him is as a 1,000 years” and “a thousand years is as a day”? Or could one put it in modern scientific terms, as “a nano-second is as 14 billion years” and “14 billion years is as a nanosecond”? Is it divine existence where time simply has stood and is standing and will stand still?  Is all of reality simply in all-encompassing simultaneity? Can the Timeless Eternity of God’s “Eternal Now” be pictured in our sanctified imagination?

In one guise God’s Eternal Now transcends time, as we understand it, and contains within it the entirety of His Space-Time Continuum of Matter and Energy in which everything and everyone who ever existed and will ever exist exists, be it believers with God or unbelievers in Gehenna, as well as, galaxies and life and animals and plants and organic and inorganic and everything.

Solomon makes some interesting observations about all this in Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 – 

For everything there is a time, and a time for every activity under the heavens:

A time to give birth and a time to die;

a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal;

a time to breach and a time to build.

A time to weep and a time to laugh; 

a time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones; 

a time to embrace and a time to keep distant.

A time to seek to find and a time to lose; 

a time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; 

a time to be silent and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate; 

a time of battle and a time of peace.

What is the benefit for one working in what he toils?

I have seen the occupation in which God gave the sons of man to be occupied.

He made all things beautiful in their proper time.  Also, he put eternity into their hearts without which man will not find the accomplishments that God made from the beginning to the end.

I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice and do good in their lives.

And also every man for what he eats and drinks and sees good in his labor, it is a gift of God.

I know that all which God does is for eternity; to it nothing is added and from it nothing is taken away – God did this that man might fear in His presence.

Whatever is, has already been; and what is to be, already is; and God calls into account, what has been pursued.

 An Interpretive Paraphrase:  Events progress forward through time, and moment-by-moment everything happens within God’s created Space-Time Continuum, as a part of the abode of God’s timeless Eternal Now:

 There are occasions for both being born and passing away;

      there are occasions for both sowing and harvesting.

 There are occasions for both bringing death and sustaining life;

      there are occasions for both tearing things apart and putting things together. 

 There are occasions for both crying your eyes out and laughing your heart out;

      there are occasions for both grieving and doing a jig.

 There are occasions for both getting rid of stuff and collecting stuff;

      there are occasions for both holding things close and staying aloof.

 There are occasions for both holding and misplacing;

      there are occasions for both stashing away and getting rid.

 There are occasions for both ripping up and mending;

      there are occasions for both being quiet and saying something.

 There are occasions for both seriously loving and hating;

      there are occasions for both a bloody fight and a prosperous calm.

What does a person really get out of working so hard at it? In light of all this we have observed and pondered about all of the activities God has arranged and planned for people to go about doing. God appropriately planned out everything in this world and has given people descending from Adam some picture and understanding of only His universe with putting a sense of past and future into their minds, otherwise without this people would not understand God’s created Space-Time Continuum containing all He did from when time began to the end of time. 

We understand that the most important thing in life is enjoying life and doing what is right. God grants to everyone what he needs to live and do things well. We understand that all that God created is in His Space-Time Continuum existing within His timeless Eternal Now, and comprehensively God neither adds anything more to the reality of this Space-Time Continuum nor does He annihilate anything of its reality. God did this that we might have an abiding awareness of the continual presence of a holy, righteous, and almighty God who must judge our every thought, word, and deed. 

Within God’s created Space-Time Continuum everything that has happened in all of the universe’s history always exists in God’s Eternal Now and everything that will happen in the future also always exists in God’s Eternal Now. And God will hold us to account for everything that each of us has done and does and will do, as He sees into our past and our present and our future.

The popular translation of “eternity” is used by many translations in Ecclesiastes 3:11 about man, where God “put eternity in their hearts…” The Hebrew noun translated, “eternity,” here is ‘olam which does involved timelessness (as is our English word, “eternity,” does) but also a long-time duration in both past and future – antiquity and futurity—the ages or the eons – for all time of long time ago, the dim past and the unforeseen future. The early Greek Translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint uses “aiōn” from which comes our “eon” [a long measure of time].  The Latin Vulgate uses “mundum”, as “the world,” which influenced the King James Version translation of the Hebrew term.  Interestingly, a modern Greek translation even puts its “kosmos” – the cosmos of the world or universe or people. Modern Israeli Hebrew translates it, as “world” and “eternity.” It is worth noting, however, that the term, “everlasting”, has been a popular synonym for “eternal”, except for its temporal connotation with a “future” directional focus.  It cannot be completely disconnected from the semantic idea of “time”, specifically future time, as “eternal” can be.  “Eternal” can stand alone with no future-time or past-time.

Thus, in Ecclesiastes 3:11we read that God “made all things beautiful in their proper time. Also, he put ‘olam into their hearts without which man will not find the accomplishments that God made from the beginning to the end.”  This ‘olam is God’s eternity within which is the universe, the cosmos, the world, as God’s created “Space-Time Continuum” of matter and energy that are God’s created accomplishments from beginning to end. So, the question comes – “What reality does God have outside of this ‘olam what would be “timeless eternity”?  God’s ‘olam in the Bible always referred to the vastness of time past and future, and later after the era of the Biblical Hebrew Old Testament in Judaism it came mean “the universe” of space within time having matter and energy.

Thus, ‘olam would appear to be both some sort of timeless reality of God and His created “space-time continuum” within it containing its matter, space, gravitation, energy and time.  Our physical human existence is in one sense “enslaved” within this time and space of “the universe.” In other words, we are place in this “universe” and then confined within it, such that we, as intelligent beings, cannot perceive of any matter with energy outside of our “here” (space) and “now” (time).  We may travel in a limited measure within our space, as time moves forward.  From given historical records, even archaeology, we may know of various things of the past.  But without divine revelation, we cannot know anything with certainty about reality in the future, beyond probability and speculation.  Moses clarifies this some regarding ‘olam in Deut. 29:29 – “The hidden things are for the LORD, Our God, and the revealed things are for us and our children regarding the universe in space and time to do all the words of this Torah.” All that our God knows in His Eternal Now may not be told to us in the Bible, but the special revelations given to us in His created space-and-time continuum found in the Bible are for us to obey.

This idea of God’s “Eternal Now” was described, as God’s “Eternal Present”, by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, a Roman senator, consul, magister officiorum, polymath, historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages (c. 480 – 524 AD).  Boethius was a central figure in the translation of the Greek classics into Latin and one of the leading Christian scholars of the 6th century, and was martyred for his faith. In his The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H.R. James, (Bk. 5, Ch. 6, Par. 3) he had an interesting examination of God’s Eternity, as His timeless “eternal present” –

“And yet, if we may without unfitness compare God's present and man's, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He see all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time.” 

Only by faith and divine revelation can we begin to perceive and understand something that one might call God’s “Eternal Now” in what one might call our God-given “sanctified imagination.” God planned out everything in this world and has given people descending from Adam some picture and understanding of His Eternal Now, otherwise without that people would not see what God is doing from when time began to the end of time except by divine revelation.

Then, comes the issue of “annihilation” of things, people and matter.  In the timelessness outside of Space-Time there appears to a simultaneity of the reality of all things living and non-living and all people, in such a way that any reality that ever existed at some point of time exists within the timelessness beyond God’s created Space-Time continuum.  At various points of time some things or people or animals may be destroyed down to their molecular-particles-existence mixed in a random way, but this would still be short of complete annihilation, be it of material matter or cognition of human thinking.  No form of death can be equated with non-existence.

This “Eternal Now” is not so much a new doctrine or theology but rather a hermeneutical way to understand and interpret the biblical text explaining God’s existence beyond this life in Space and Time. In an effort to try to picture “God’s Eternal Now,” one might think about a present instance of “Now,” and then wait, and then the next instance of “Now,” and then wait, and then the next instance of “Now”.  Then, take all these “separate Nows”, and put them all together, as a simultaneous, one and the same, God’s Eternal Now, where one perceives them all at once with no past and future, no cause and effect, no time but just space and “Now.”  One could picture, even specify, this “Eternal Now”, as a “Universal Simultaneity” or a “Panorama Simultaneity” of all things in objective reality existing and occurring, as spaceless and timeless, where time does not exist.

God planned out everything in this world and has given people descending from Adam some picture and understanding of His Eternal Now, otherwise without that Eternal Now people would not understand God’s created Space-Time Continuum of all He did from when time began to the end of time.

Perhaps one could illustrate a “picture” of this timeless “Eternal Now,” as a Multiplex Movie Theater complex of several theater screens and rooms with projectors using the old celluloid plastic film strips on reels with individual frames of images with “captions.”  Imagine all the projector rooms filled full with all the film strips unedited and unwound, lying haphazardly all around each room up to the ceiling for a person to wonder around and look at the images and words contained in the film strips in a random and disheveled arrangement, as apparently “time standing still.”  One would see a universe of things and activities in seemingly still views. This is a very homely and mundane way to try to perceive this “Eternal Now,” but it does give one an avenue toward a model – a way – a picture – to illustrate God’s forever and forever of past and future, along with His omniscience and omnipresence. 

Another interesting twist can be found the fields of physics, astrophysics and atomic physics.  Time comes to a halt when an object travels at the speed of light according to Albert Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity or enters a black hole according to his Theory of General Relativity. According to Special Relativity, time is not absolute; it stretches and warps depending on your speed and the strength of gravity around you. When these forces reach their absolute limits, time effectively stops entirely relative to the outside world. Theoretically, when something reaches the Speed of Light Time completely stops. From the perspective of a photon (a particle of light) traveling at c, the universe is created, ages, and dies in a single, instantaneous flash.  It is physically impossible for anything with mass (like a human or a spaceship) to reach the speed of light because the mass continually increases, such that it would require infinite energy. 

Einstein’s General Relativity shows that gravity also warps time. The stronger the gravitational pull, the slower time moves. “The Event Horizon” is the boundary surrounding a Black Hole in space, where the escape velocity equals the speed of light. If an outside observer watches you fall toward a Black Hole, they will see your clock tick slower and slower. As you reach the event horizon, your time appears to freeze completely. To the outside world, you are stuck in time forever.  Theoretically, from your perspective, paradoxically, you would not feel time stop. You would cross The Event Horizon normally, but you would see the entire future history of the outside universe flash past you in an instant before you are crushed. 

The fascinating application, as a purpose for all of this picture, is for us to have a way of perceiving God’s Eternal Now existing out there somewhere and see our world…our universe…our history…our future…are all a part within this Eternal Now, existing, as we live even now. So, one might picture that those in The Third Heaven are looking down at us in a created Space-Time Continuum looking at the Second Heaven’s space and light AND our here-now AND Hades and ending with The Great White Throne Judgment all in one grand omniscient and omnipresent view of one simultaneity, where outside of this created Space-Time Continuum will exist or rather does exist Gehenna AND the (new) heaven, (new) Earth, (new) Jerusalem., where the “new” is only God’s accommodation for us within this Space-Time Continuum.  So, in that regard the things described in Revelation 20:11-22:5 may not so much be in the future but in the present for God’s Eternal Now.  Thus, one may not think of Heaven’s “streets of gold”, as only a future thing but as a present thing in Heaven, albeit the Third Heaven that is outside of our Space-Time.

Beyond death’s door believers enter into “the presence of the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8) into this Third Heaven (2 Cor. 12:2 also Paradise in v. 3) where they will “know, as they are known” omnisciently by God (1 Cor. 13:12). In fact, Paul explained the stark contrast between this life and life eternal beyond, outside of space and time in1 Cor. 13:8-13. Thus, beyond death’s portal into God’s Third Heaven, outside and beyond space and time, knowledge and the partial lack of it will be set aside.  On this earth our knowledge will never be omniscient, but beyond this life in eternity, as God knows us omnisciently, so will we know omnisciently, where no time exists. One may picture those believers who have passed from this life and the angels and God, as they are looking down upon us into this created Space-Time Continuum and seeing God’s created “Second Heaven” of the universe in darkness then in light with a created “First Heaven” of the atmosphere around the earth AND our present here and now AND The Great White Throne Judgement. 

Thus, believers after their death or after their translation at the Harpage/Rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 enter into the timelessness of God’s Eternal Now, even though time continues to exist on earth and in God’s Space-Time Continuum.  This even with God’s trumpet call initiates The Day of the Yahweh [The Day of the LORD] with what will be a time of Tribulation for 7 years on earth. They will continue in this Eternal Now state, even when they return back on earth during “The Regeneration” of the future Millennial Reign of Christ in a rulership capacity according to Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 19:28.

Indeed, a corollary of God’s Eternal Now would be His omniscience, in that His knowledge would span all the details of His Space-Time Continuum, which would then have a correlation between His omniscience and omnipresence.  Thus, His “Eternal Now” would corollate with His eternal “Everywhere Here” within which He created His “Space-Time Continuum” of both.  Imagine God being right here and on the earth’s moon and on the planet Pluto and Polaris and even Earendel [“The Morning Star”] all at the same time, including of course every point on our planet Earth.

Amid all of this God has planned a connection between our world of a Space-Time Continuum and His timeless Eternal Now in what the Bible describes, as “Eternal Life.” The Greek term most used for life in the New Testament is zoē rather than bios, such as in John 3:16 (“For God thus loved the world that he gave His one-of-a-kind Son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life”) and Rom. 6:23 (“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”)  Zoē is life in its inherent quality, where bios is life in its chronological quantity. This timeless eternal life is explained in detail in 1 John 5:11-13 – “And this is the testimony that eternal life God has given to us, and this life is in his son. The one having the son has life; the one not having the son of God has no life. These things I wrote to you believing in the name of the Son of God, so that you might know that you have eternal life, and so that you might always believe in the name of the son of God.” This Eternal Life is timeless and is what God gives believers, as an existential bridge between this life in His Space-Time Continuum and life beyond in His Eternal Life.

In connection with this biblical Eternal Life biblical theology is the matter of the incorruptible body outside of this present life on earth.  After death’s shadowy valley, as a “doorway”, God has made for us a body “eternal in the heavens.”  Notably, death is described as a “sleep”, a conscious sleep, but not an unconscious coma, as some heresies teach.  We are always conscious and aware beyond death even before the Day of the Lord begins with the Rapture of believers.  The Bible also teaches that a “glorified” part of this eternal life will be a future Resurrection Body at the future resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. Some have erroneously proposed these as two consecutively different bodies (i.e., “an intermediate body” then “a resurrection body), but in God’s timeless Eternal Now that distinction is chronologically irrelevant.  After death we will have one incorruptible body for always… “eternal in the heavens”…even as we are walking on earth in this life, as Paul explained in 2 Corinthians 5:1-8 – “For we know that, if our earthly house of this tent might be dissolved, we have from God a house, not made by hands, eternal in the heavens.” In Corinthians 15 Paul had given many details about all of this.

Thus, our connection and place in God’s timeless Eternal Now does not begin after the end of the world nor after our resurrection nor immediately after our death but, at least in part, with our salvation, our regeneration by God’s Holy Spirit, at the time in this life on earth that we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus Christ, as our Lord and Savior.